The Players

A standout football player Carson High School and the University of Iowa, where he was a starting wide receiver in the 1982 Rose Bowl, the former San Bernardino County sheriff's deputy served in the department for nearly ten years. He had worked as a jailer West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga and on patrol for more than four years. He was stationed in Chino Hills the night he pursued the Corvette driven by Luis Escobedo on a high speed chase through Chino and Montclair. One of Webb's most fervent public defenders has been his father, former Compton Police Chief Ivory Webb Sr., who said his son "felt threatened" by Carrion's motion just before he shot the unarmed Air Force airman three times. Webb left the sheriff's department last year.

A friend of Carrion's since high school, Escobedo was the driver of the Corvette that led San Bernardino Sheriff's Deputies on a high speed chase through Montclair and Chino with Carrion as his passenger. He plead guilty to a felony charge of evading a peace officer with wanton disregard for safety and driving under the influence with a blood alcohol content of .08 percent or higher. He will testify at the trial and is serving a 6-month sentence for those charges, as well on an unrelated charge of carrying a loaded firearm in a public place.

The used-car salesman, who fled Cuba for the United States in the early 1993, was in bed in his Chino home on the night of Jan. 29, 2006 when he heard a car crash across the street from his home. After seeing an officer standing with his gun drawn next to the crashed car, Valdes grabbed his Sony digital zoom camera and began filming. Later that night he invited sheriff's detectives into his house to watch the recording of the shooting and turned over the footage investigators. Shortly after the incident, Valdes was taken into custody while renewing his immigrant registration card in Pomona. Immigration officials discovered he had outstanding warrants for in Florida aggravated. One aggravated assault charge was dropped later that spring. In the week Valdes was scheduled to go to trial in August of 2006, Florida prosecutors dropped the second aggravated assault charges stemming for an 1997 incident in which Valdes allegedly pointed a gun at a man during an argument. He plead guilty to a misdemeanor of disorderly conduct, but the details of his plea agreement were sealed, according to the Associated Press.

Smith grew up in Monterey Park decided to pursue a legal career as a child watching courtroom dramas. After graduating from University of San Diego law school, he spent 12 years at the San Bernardino District Attorney's office as a prosecutor, where he tried career criminals. One of his most noteworthy cases was a 1983 death penalty conviction against Demetrie Mayfield, who stole a car from a family and then went back and killed two people in the home after learning they might testify against him at the theft trial. (Death penalty sentence was later overturned on appeal). Smith ran for an open seat on the bench in 1986. He has run unopposed three times, and now is one of two judges at the San Bernardino County courthouse handling long trials. He has presided over many of the most high profile cases in the county in recent years including the trial of serial murderer Wayne Adam Ford. He splits his time between civil and criminal, but spends 85 percent of his time handling criminal cases. He earned his B.S. at Cal State University, Los Angeles, in 1971, and his law degree at University of San Diego Law School in 1974.

Cope has been a deputy district attorney in the San Bernardino County District Attorney's Office since 1983 and is now assigned to the major crimes unit where he handles death penalty cases, violent crimes and other high profile prosecution. He had previously spent one year practicing family law, criminal defense and some business law at a Thousand Oaks-based law firm. After graduating from law school worked as a law clerk and later a special investigator for the State Bar of California. He has handled a number of high profile cases including the 2002 double murder of a prominent Highland real estate broker and his wife, the case of serial rapist Timothy Lewis Jones who was sentenced to 177 years in prison, and the retrial of Damien Guerrero, who is charged in the 2003 shooting death of 18-year-old Kelly Bullwinkle of Redlands. He earned his B.A. at Brigham Young University in 1977, and his law degree at Pepperdine University School of Law in 1980.

Since 2001, Michael D. Schwartz has been an associate attorney at Silver, Hadden, Silver, Wexler and Levine in Santa Monica, where he has represented police officers, firefighters and other public employees in administrative, criminal and civil litigation. He served for one year as a deputy public defender in the Riverside County Public Defender's Office in 2000 and was a deputy public defender in Ventura County from 1993 and 2000. Before beginning his legal career, he worked in television production in New York as a program coordinator, production assistant and scheduling coordinator for three years after graduating from college. In an upcoming case, Schwartz will defend Riverside County Firefighter Michael Arizaga, who was charged with vehicular manslaughter in a 2005 engine accident that killed a fellow firefighter. He earned his B.A. at Hofstra University in 1987, and his law degree at George Washington University in 1993.